You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 2023's Newest(?) Piano Sensation

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Adam and Peter dive in on Jahari Stampley who recently won the Herbie Hancock Competition. From where he got his roots to his future endeavors, Adam and Peter want to know it all. This is an episode you do not want to miss. Links from the episode below ↓NYTimes ArticleAmazing GracePiano HacksHave a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Hey, Adam. Yes, Peter. What do you know about what's happening in jazz piano in 2023? I mean, I'd like to think I know a little bit as a jazz pianist living in 2020. Right. But if folks have been listening closely to this podcast, they might think the state of jazz piano is mostly about Bill Evans and Larry Bird. And in fact, it's not, as we're going to learn today. No, the state of jazz piano in 2023 has actually nothing to do with Larry Bird.

Sadly. I'm Adam Dennis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at Podcast. Music advice coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open Studio jazz.com for a deeper dive on all of this. I like to use that intro, Peter, as a vocal warm up.

I want to warm up the pipes all the way through the rain. You are a vocalist of note. Well, of some notes. Duly noted. Sometimes sliding from one to the next, you know. Absolutely. So this is exciting today because we're going to be talking about the couple of things that I'm... What's going to do with your voice over there, too?

I've been a little bit ill. I'm not going to, you know. Do you have the button for the old, the old, you'll hear it sneeze guard? The COVID shield. Yeah, unfortunately, we don't have, we need that back, you know. For those of you don't know, during the entire pandemic, we, well, actually, we didn't do the podcast live for a few months. Right. But we came back.

Well, we were moderately COVID safe. Yeah, we came back with a big plastic shield between me and Peter. Plexiglass. Plexiglass, yeah. Custom made by our own Dan Martin. Right. Did that? I think that did work.

Did it? Yeah. I guess it did. Yeah. Have you noticed buffets are bad. with a vengeance. Oh yeah, when you said back right now, I think I got something in my eye. Sorry, my, my, my pee.

Oh, boy. Yeah, okay, so we're talking today about several, well, a general subject that we're super passionate about jazz piano. But in today, this is so cool because, like, I'm getting educated, I'm learning stuff. They recently had the rejuvenated Herbie Hancock International Jazz Piano Competition. I love it. Well, I shouldn't say rejuvenated. It just started back up. It had been off for like three or four years.

2019 was the last one. Yeah. And then due to the pandemic and some various changes, it's back refreshed. In a new location, it's moved to New York. It was in D.C. before. And we have a new winner, a new victory, a new king of jazz piano, as it were. Oh, we're going to find out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Named Jihari Stampley, who won the competition. And so it's been interesting to me to kind of go and check out his music, learn about him. And also, like you, he's kind of been on your radar for a few. months now, you said, right? At least a few months, yeah. I think maybe, maybe even a couple of years now that I think about it. But yeah, you know what I love about, this used to be called the Monk competition. Right. And it's now been rebranded as the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz, which I think is a smart move. Yes. Because Herbie is very much involved. In fact, he was one of the judges this year, which is amazing. Right. Well, he's been a judge for many years. When I did that

competition like 30 years ago, yeah, or more, he was one of the judges. Wow. Incredible. Oh, my gosh. Mary McPartland. Look at you. Herbie Hancock. Somebody else like super big time.

Yeah. Wow. Well, this year's judges are no slouches either. Right. Danilo Perez, Ruby Hancock. Bill Charlap. Bill Charlop. Hiromi.

Heromi. Yeah. Like, it doesn't get much bigger than that lineup of pianists there. Yeah. But you know what's what I like about the Monk. Orrin Evans. Oran Evans. Amazing.

What I love about the monk competition and now what we call the Herbie competition, We call it the Herbie Competition or the Hancock? No one says Hancock. Let's look up the official name. The Hancock Competition it says. The Hancock Competition. That's kind of a weird thing to... I know.

I mean, everybody calls them Herbie, colloquially. Right. And I guess Hancock we can use. It's the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz International Competition. Okay. So the Hancock Competition is what we'll respectfully call it. But we'll always kind of... I think just like here in St. Louis, how we call Jazz St. Louis the Bistro.

Even though that's really not part of their branding anymore, we'll always colloquially call it the bistro. I feel like musicians of our generation will always call this the monk competition because it was so iconic. And what I love about competitions like this, but specifically with this competition, is it is sort of a, you know, you get to know, definitely players that are going to be future Hall of Famers. Yes. You know what I mean? Like you mentioned, you were in, what, do you remember the year you did it? I want to say 92, but could have been 91, 93. Who were the? Who were the? the who was the lineup of that year? Do you remember? Oh, there was a bunch of great, uh, Samuel

Hell was there. Samya, Hell, amazing. Ed Simon. Ed Simon, amazing. Um, Jackie Terrison was the winner. Jackie Tarison won it. Was the winner. And he was pretty big back there and in the 90s. He had a couple of blue note albums that were pretty. Still big. Yeah. Um, yeah. Um, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. And like, you know, uh, I mean, they do it for all instruments, too. It's not just piano. Like they, they started revolving. I think not too long after your year, they started at a saxophone and drums and guitar and things. The first couple of years was just piano. Trump did. Yep.

Yeah. And so like, yeah, I mean, I remember one year when I was young, like the saxophone competition, I think Seamus Blake won it and John Ellis was second. Yeah. You know what I mean? I love those guys. And I was like introduced to their music via this, you know, competition because they were still so young. And I feel like for a lot of people, you know, there's some, I know Jihari, but there's

some names here on the list of runners up that I'm not super familiar. with that I'm definitely going to check out as far as like young early 20s jazz musicians that are just crushing it you know right oh sorry covered your face there for a second good that's all good no and look we're looking here among other references the new york times because i have a membership i'm a member did i tell you that i am too subscription oh nice nice um but uh jazz is hancock competition returns crowning electrifying rising star that's jihari stample he's 23 years old from chicago and you know the article Giovanni Rusenello

is the writer here and you can go check this out. We'll link to this below. He's from Chicago. It kind of goes through and I was just looking for the second and third place because we want to give props to them as well. So can we go to our first controversy here before we talk about the exciting stuff? Is that okay?

Yeah, there's a... I'm not crazy about this. The house rhythm section didn't help. The drummer Carl Allen is proudly agnostic about most styles. of drumming that go beyond the four-field, four-field. I'm not, okay, now full disclosure, I'm friends with Carl Allen, front of the pod, and I've played with Carl Allen a lot. I wouldn't say that that's true. In my experience, you know.

No, that's a dumb paragraph to write, honestly. Well, there you go. Yeah, and I mean, it's just, it doesn't really, I don't know, maybe he came across that way to this reviewer, you know, during that one performance, but that's a lot to kind of put out, to lay out there to a drummer who's really been a linchpin of the modern jazz drumming scene in New York since the late 80s.

Yeah, who has an incredibly important voice in the music for decades now. And it's possible that it was, the writer was framing it in this way to kind of support his thesis of, you know, and you always want to find a good story, you know, I guess. But that Jihari was able to better leverage like different styles and he dressed more relaxed. You know, he goes on to say about this than the other two players who were trying to be a little bit more conservative and a little bit more expected in terms of their repertoire choices. and in their stylistic choices, you know.

So it's like he wanted to fit that into a narrative. Honestly, if I have any criticism of here of the New York Times writing about jazz in general, which they do more than anybody else, so I hate to criticize at all. But they are, they do lean on the downtown scene more than I think most listeners really care about. Right. You know what I'm saying? Even New York listeners. Right.

So to like drag someone for basically swinging. Right. So we're taking New York Times off. Bam. No, no, no, no. No, no. No, no. It's still important.

It's so important to the music to have a publication that spends so much energy on the music. Right. But it is very biased towards like downtown Manhattan jazz scene. Yeah. Very specific downtown Manhattan jazz scene too. And I think the main thing getting out of this is kind of the reporting on it. That's what I appreciate. To me, sometimes when they go beyond that into these like really stylistically, you know,

opinions about the different styles and things that you're like, if you're on the inside, of course, we have a different viewpoint on it. But I think that's important. Like you can just sort of, you know, report the facts like a journalist. I think where you say this is the compas, this is who won, this is who played. The audience really was behind it, like all that kind of stuff,

which they really nailed well in this article. That's good. But then there is kind of going beyond and creating another narrative that to most people reading will be like, oh, that's just fact. Just like what was the clothes that they were wearing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in any case, Jihari Stampley, let's talk about him because full disclosure, I didn't, why do I say full disclosure all this time? I'm like, this is some kind of a legal briefing this, you know what I'm so legalistic. For the, official record.

My attorneys would like me to first apologize to the editorial staff of the, you'll hear it. But I knew nothing about Jihari Stampley. I probably had seen some of his stuff online, and I think it brings up a bigger issue, like, are we too siloed? You know, why am I not seeing more stuff? I got to get out the house more. I don't know. But because upon learning about Jihari and like kind of doing some research for this

episode, it's not, he's 23 years old, but he's been doing. stuff like interesting things online since like 2018. Yeah. We're going to look at a couple of his, you know, performances and online offerings. I mean, he's so well versed in the online world. Not only did he learn to play piano. I love it. As he said in an interview that I saw primarily from watching a YouTube video.

Yeah. Ding ding, shout out Royce Martin, you know, for doing the same thing. Basically learn from that, but also has even created an app that has gamified learning to play, you know, music at the keyboard and stuff. So definitely, you know, we could say, oh, he's in the digital age. coming up. No, he's a product of the current time. Well, you know what I love about this is, you know, we just did our sort of semi-controversial episode on Adam Neely's video on Loeve, which was all about

Loishe? No, the other person you mentioned. Adam Neely? Yeah. But, no, and that was all about, like, you know, the sort of media propping up this singer-songwriter from Iceland is like the savior of jazz or whatever. And we talked a little bit about in that episode about like Gen Z learning the way that Gen Z learns everything. Yes. But they're learning about jazz through things like, YouTube and like the gamification of it. Right. And so Loewe is one example of sort of like the sort of pop side of things. But what I like about Jahari Stampley is like he is fully in the tradition.

Yes. And learned everything, you know, not everything, but, you know, started his journey on YouTube, which so many of like our open studio members are kind of in that same boat. Yeah. So many people start on, you know, these online resources as opposed to like you and I, which are like someone throwing a real book at our heads, you know, 35 years ago. Right. And we got to like figure out, you know, what, what, what monks tunes are what's happening in a monk tune when we're 15? Like, you know what I'm saying? Just from listening again and again. Yeah. But this is a whole new way to do it. And it's like, it's not a better or worse way. It's just like humans figure this shit out, you know? Right. And then I think what we want to think about is like what is the end result. Not that Jihari Stampley at 23 is his end result, but he is like a player now. You know what I mean? Like how did he get to the point? Super interesting. I agree. It's like it's not going to be. It's not going to be. It's not going to be. It's not going to. It's not going to be. It's not. It's not. It's not. to be the same. Like we think, oh, you know, you have these new tools YouTube and Spotify. So we assume that like, oh, so you can pull up Thelonious Monks versions and learn that. But that's not what the young folks are doing. That's not what Gen Z is doing. And we'll look at like Jihari Sampley was talking

about, uh, where was it, P. Miller, this pianist I'd never heard of. Like that's where he learned to play piano, literally watching him as he said, looking at the buttons that he was pressing on, on like a cover of a Coldplay song. Amazing. Like that was his entry point into it. And now he's standing next to Herbie Hancock. You know, receiving the award. So I thought we could just pull up a few things, and I'll go full screen on this. You know what?

So this is on Jahari's... I thought this would be cool because this will kind of get us into perhaps the creative process, the sort of thought process that Jahari has and maybe, you know, other young players kind of coming up in this kind of environment.

Now that you have your key, you can pick any progression. Literally, you don't even have to really, you know, have anything worked out. So for the sake of this, I'm going to pick the key of E. Okay, so first thing, I'm gonna pick the key of E. Like, I mean, like look at the speed that then he's moving enough.

And I think that's not just Jihari. That's like, you know, I like that. That's like a fast speed, but it's just something to note. And I'm gonna just pick any set of three numbers. Cap. Which is my third step. I need to pick three numbers at random. So let me just think.

Seven. Four, five. So these are my three random numbers. and what you want to do is change your chord on every number. So, seven, four, five. So mathematics connection with music, which we always know has been there, but I think that young musicians coming up

are really making that connection in a much more overt way, whereas, you know, other older generations, it was more something that was there that wasn't talked about a lot. So wait, so this is a little confusing here, Peter. Is this him teaching or is this the guy he learned from? No, this is him kind of. of laying out his theory. Okay.

Like, so this is, okay, I should have said this. This is a piano hacks video that he has. We'll have a link to this below. But it's part of like the app that he's developed and stuff in terms of like not only how to learn to play music, but in this case, like how to improvise, I think he's talking about.

In the key of E. So like in other words, he's not talking about, okay, if you want to learn to improvise on the key of E, take this Thelonious Monk line or this Chick-Care line. Right, right, right. No, take, you look at this as a math problem.

Look at this as an algorithm. Look at this as a game, you know. something like that okay obvious gospel influences killing chops I mean not just technical chops but gospel chops at this point but think about the

so this is something that we've you know like I've done before when it's like you take one note and you think about all the different chords you can play over that but was he doing what's the 745 stand for here I think he's going to get to that so he's starting actually I don't know

but it's something like in terms of choosing which notes it is should I take it back where he's playing Let me see. I haven't missed that. He's going to play set of notes. So these are my three random numbers. What you want to do is change your chord on every number.

So, seven, four, five, and the key of E. So. Oh, it's the number of notes. It's the rhythm. Yes. Something like that. How's he thinking of that that? The harmony is just shifting different ideas.

Yeah. Now you can do any core progression that works within that key using these three numbers. these three numbers. Literally all I'm doing, I'm alternating between different progression using those three numbers. So I'm just going to literally... You see, like, even the way he's talking about it is not the way that we would traditionally talk about. Like, we would be more like, okay, so if you take the seven, you think about rhythmically how you're going to, you know, superimpose that into one beat and then the four. Like he's thinking on another level.

I'm going to keep going with this. I'm saying. You know what I'm saying? Where he's going. I'm going to ride using this concept. So here goes another. Something like that. something like that. So like... That is definitely a...

I'm going to teach you how to paint an owl. Draw us two circles. Paint the rest of the owl kind of situation. He's so killing. I know. He's like, just draw three numbers, random three numbers and then you can... Right.

I mean, there's like, was he playing that rhythmic pattern of seven and then in the right hand? I think he probably was. But it was so chaotic. But he's so good. I know. I don't know.

I mean, it's like, you know, leave us in the comments if you know what the hell is. going on here. That's amazing, though. There's obvious Corey Henry influences. There's Jacob Collier influences. There's what other influences are there?

I don't know. I don't know either. Albert Einstein? Obviously, you said he learned piano in high school, but is he playing, he must be playing at church. Right. With a B3 there. Well, he's from a musical family.

Let me find this other video. I'm going to play the one that he said in the interview that I saw was like really his entry points. So that's here. This is P. Miller. Cold play. Can't touch this. He does start.

And then segues quickly into paradise. Skip ahead a little bit, just so you see. Like, this is nothing at the level of what we just heard Jihari playing, right? Yep. But I think what happened, you know, he's getting into it here, is that, like, Jihari said that he was able to see exactly what he could play. Like, he definitely talked about that in the interview. like I could, and it's so interesting because he said I could see the buttons he was pressing.

He never said keys, I don't think, which I thought was super interesting. And he, because of the angle of the camera here, it was so good, like he was able to just watch this. And he knew the song, he said. He's like, I love that song, that Cole played song. He's like, I knew the song, but he literally learned how to play piano. I mean, if this is accurate to his recollection in terms of the interview by watching P. Miller push the buttons to song so he's able to make that musical connection and then to see how the thing was fleshed out. Now obviously he's gone way beyond this. This is nothing like crazy jazz improv that I've heard.

This is the first thing I've heard from him. No. So I just think it's super interesting. It's just such a totally different way to get to, you know, maybe a similar end result or at least the end results of what's happening now. And I'll show you this. Why don't I keep going there? Here we go here. Giant Steps. Ever heard of it? should have said that. This was a while ago, wasn't it? Yeah,

this wasn't even like, yeah, this is, five years ago, so he's 23, he's like 18 years old, you know? Crazy, man.

So this is within a couple of years of whom actually learning to play the piano. Come on. Stop it. So it's like you hear, oh, you're sorry, you want me stop it? No,

no, it's amazing. We'll link to all these. So, I mean, the idea is that like, um, like you hear the Robert Glasper influence, Robert Glasperfication a little bit in the music,

the chorus, the Corey Henry influence. But I think mainly you hear like this a little bit unfiltered and super interesting approach, like a new. Very original to take. Very original take. But I mean, I think we'd be wrong to be like, that's not Tommy Flanagan playing. There's not enough, you know, Herbie Hancock in there or whatever.

It's like this is the stuff that is happening now in terms of for him, like these are the influences I bring. These are the gamification of it. This is like the way that I learned. It is, it just, I love it because it shows there isn't just one way to get to this. Yeah. You know, like if I already hear, you know, a young pianist playing, I'm going to do a solo piano version of Giant Steps and it came out like this.

I would be like, that's dope. Yeah. Like that is such a, like, thank you. And I mean, I can only imagine him in playing this now, not to say that you shouldn't be doing original music, which he does and all these different things. I mean, his choice is in the competition. I already knew that was a cool thing. He did Jerry Allen's, a drummer song, which is, I mean, I love Jerry Allen's

a very tasty choice. And that's such a great. And I don't think that was like a required selection or anything. He also did the John Hicks tune, which I thought was cool. Real Insiders kind of thing. His mother is a musician as well. His mother's a musician and a pilot as well. And they're on tour.

I believe flying between the gigs, which is a super cool approach to it. That explains what like the kind of taste, obviously growing up in a musical household with like really good records being played and music being played to pick those like John Hicks and Jerry Allen and deep cuts like that at such a young age. Yeah. very, this is very inspiring man. Obviously a sort of upper echelon intelligence of a person. You know what I mean? Exactly. It was very smart individual we're dealing with here who's making his own game apps on playing the piano. Yeah, I believe he programmed the app himself too. I mean, then he developed it in that way.

Just that set like that number exercise that he was demonstrating on the B3 alone. And what he got out of it is enough to like take most like professional play to the drawing board of like, what, what, what are you talking? What is, what's happening? You know what I mean? Right, right, right. Yeah, and I think that there was one other thing I wanted to play, and I thought it was more recent, but even this is four years old, which is, which is amazing. I'm super excited to hear what he does next. You know, one thing that was quoted in the, in the reporting on the competition kind of performance or the final performance, I guess, between the finalist, is that Jihari kind of set himself apart from, and look, I just want to, oh, yeah, here it is. The other finalists, important to mention them too, because it's never like, oh, he just blew everybody away.

It seems like he kind of did. But I'm sure these other pianists are amazing and going to be doing their own thing as well. Paul Cornish out of Houston is one and was, this is the second and third place. And Connor Rohrer out of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who's 23 as well. But there was like a note of this, which normally I'd be like, ah, this doesn't matter. But this maybe does have something. It says New York Times at the finals, while the other. contestants let me throw this up in there so that at the finals while the other contestants

paul cornish of houston and connor rour of mechanicsburg wore tailored suits stamply came clad in a pattern shoe pattern shirt loose fitting corduair pants white shoes and a head wrap um be yourself yeah be yourself his energy was both intense and private he was coping with a deep bereavement a close friend had died on saturday the next night he chose to play a lovely modulating hick ballad after the morning as a tribute. And so it was noted somewhere else in here that, you know, he's an artist you want to hear again. And I think that's an important thing coming up from here.

Like we always talk about like, oh, did he honor the tradition? Did he do this or whatever? You know, screw all that kind of stuff. Where the people in there, the listeners, not the jazz, you know, intelligentsia or whatever, but like is this something that where people are like, whoa, I want to hear that. And I can already tell from looking at his online performance, looking at his Instagram stuff.

And look, I got kind of convicted by you when we were prepping for this too because you, I sort of said, you know about him? You're like, oh, yeah, I've seen this stuff. And I immediately went to, like, I was like, I want to learn about him. I immediately went to YouTube. And I'm like, man, these videos kind of old, but he's killing. And you're like, you might want to check him on Instagram and TikTok because there's a lot more stuff there. Hey boomer. Yeah, exactly.

It was a hey boomer. And, but I think that's important for us to be like, because even the New York Times thing was kind of like, he came out of nowhere. He's not coming out of nowhere. For people that have their ear to the ground. So, like, I got to do a better job of that because I'm super interested in this. artists they're developing. Obviously he has a lot of developing to do. It's exciting to see. So I didn't miss out on everything, but I mean, it is cool to see. It's exciting to see where he's going to go as an artist. Very, very exciting. And like, you know, back to the suits thing,

Peter, I think just for anybody who's wondering like, oh, should I, should I dress up? Like, express yourself, be yourself. That could be wearing a suit. That could be. But wear the suit, like you mean it. You know what I mean? You're wearing a pink speedo. If that's you. I mean, if that's going to be your thing. But, you know, musicians should, I think, express them. I think the look is part of the show. Yeah. For sure. And so just consider that, you know. Yeah. And put a little effort into it. Put a little bit of yourself into it. Right. And so is Jihari Stampling and these other great young artists, are they perhaps representing in their attire what their approach to the music is? Not a totally button down like, you know, let's take a deep

breath and like a process like a classical piece. But I love it when the when the look kind of reflects the music. You know what I mean? When it not matches. perfectly, but when it's congruent with the music, I think is important. So that's not about, oh, you're disrespecting, that's what they used to tell. If you don't wear a suit and tie, you're disrespecting the music. I don't know about that. I don't know that audiences feel that way, I should say.

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a certain like a certain group that is always going to suit and tie it. Yeah. But I think that even that can get like a little, it's not disrespectful, but like if you're just doing it like a uniform or you're just like doing it because you think you should be doing it, it's not going to look as good. You know what I mean? Even like the suit and tie is going to look like you're just kind of,

well, here's what I got to put on here. Like put it on, wear it. Like it's part of the gig. Right. You know what I mean? Like, do, like style it. Like be yourself with it. Right. Well, okay, well, let's check out a little bit of this just maybe to close things out. This is amazing grace. Like I said, I thought this was recent. It's such a mature reading, an interesting reading of this on a Bosendorf, I believe, with some very, very effective. sound, but I think it'll give a good kind of flavor of some other kinds of things that he can do. You know what? I haven't.

I've been following Jihari on Instagram for a while, but I haven't seen his piano hacks. Yeah. Like what you were just showing me? I'm kind of go on a deep dive on that. You know I'm super nerdy about piano hacks, Peter. Really? I never know. Hacky about it. Yeah, here we go. Amazing grace.

Bozzy. Between the Bosenorfer and the compression on the video, it sounds like it's a string pad almost. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's just like, kind of constant sustain continuous using facility for someone who learned in high school yeah below this one as well and yeah i mean this was uh it's a great new discovery i know i'm late to the party but isn't it fun though be at the party yeah it is fun yeah we should go on a deep dive of uh some jihari's music as he grows yeah exactly how to follow his journey and i think the important thing too here at least you know for me

and going through this discovery process to is just like you know this is not about Sometimes these competitions can be about we're anointing this one as the savior of jazz piano or as like this is the face until next year we come. No, there's always new different interesting artists coming along and it's much about having these different be it social media tools or whatever

to be able to hear somebody as opposed to just like oh, you have to wait till they come to town. You hear about them for years. We can learn about it and to see these different things and be influenced by them in. You know what's cool too is like, you know, sometimes like the classical competitions I feel like they can be a little toxic for the culture of the music.

You know what I mean? I hear classical musicians talk about it. It's pretty intense. And it's like it's your way to stardom and it's your way to get a name for yourself. And it's also not great for the music some people have commented on. I think with like these jazz competitions, while it is kind of still weird to compete about any kind of art. First, second, third. Harmony, second.

Rhythm third. It's not as clear cut as like you're interpret. interpreting Chopin or you're interpreting Beethoven. Right, right, right. You are, you are an artist developing and you're kind of presenting your thing. Yeah. And it is, it is weird to then, like,

slot that into places. Yeah. Because it's so, uh, uh, subjective. But I do feel like it's a little bit looser than sort of your traditional piano competition. Yeah, and it's kind of interesting now in this, and it's because they had this hiatus for years, the, um, the, um,

Herbie Hancock competition, um, that there's probably been even more like, questioning of like what is the relevancy today like are you still really breaking an artist like Joshua redman won the monk competition and like then he got a record contract and then he was out there but he was already like i mean i had played with him before that i knew i mean everybody kind of knew i mean all the young the young lions yeah that's in these competitions you're kind of already on the scene right but i mean i think nowadays it would be a lot more easy as opposed to 35 years ago to question the relevancy of this is like do we even need this i'm like are you know is the herbie

Hancock Institute, like, is it as valid for them to kind of anoint somebody? But I would say in this case, great choice, seemingly. And, you know, there is still a place to kind of bring to the, to the larger general public some attention and, and not legitimacy, because the music legitimizes something. Like, if an artist's, if an artist's music connects with an audience, that is legitimate, you know. It's kind of cool to see an artist, all these artists so young be put on a bigger stage at this stage in your career because like you can go back and look at like oh my gosh can you believe it was like Aaron Parks and Gerald Clayton or whatever at the same on the same stage or whatever like those kind of moments can happen and really I don't think this is unusually young I don't remember when

how old Joshua Russ or Gerald who I can't remember who won these I know Josh it because I remember folks in their 20s you know yeah early 20s I mean this is not unusually young or anything I think just the story of some of these players coming up like not starting until high school and stuff that's kind of unusual. You didn't used to hear about that a lot. Cool. Well, this is fun, yeah. Until next time. You'll hear it. Oh, boy.